History of Public WiFi
- Authors
The dreams and aspirations of a municipal Wi-Fi system aren’t new: provide free, high-speed internet to your community, close the digital divide, shrink the homework gap, and give consumers a free, public option for internet service. It’s not hard to see why the concept has remained so popular over the years.
The Early Days
Municipal Wi-Fi projects date back nearly two decades. As early as 1999 Metricom was offering a 28.8 kbps commercial service in most of the San Francisco Bay Area, and a few years later they launched a blisteringly-fast (for the time) service with 128 kbps – comparable to the copper-pair ISDN data service which many startup companies used for what was then considered broadband. In parallel, there was a growing desire to provide Wi-Fi data as a public service.
One of the first high-profile public projects came in 2005, when the City and County of San Francisco, CA issued a Request for Information for the deployment of a city-wide wireless broadband network. In 2006, EarthLink & Google, by proposing a unique, strategic partnership, were awarded the contract. Using the same wireless network, Google would offer free, 300 kilobits-per-second service, while EarthLink, an internet service provider transitioning from the dial-up modem to broadband era, would offer a faster, premium service of 1 megabit per second for US$20/month. The cost to the city would be zero, which was assuredly music to city officials’ ears.
By this time, Google was already offering free Wi-Fi service in its hometown of Mountain View, CA and EarthLink had struck agreements with Philadelphia and other cities. Many others quickly followed suit as Chicago; Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis and signed similar deals with EarthLink, Metricom, Metro-Fi, and other providers. [https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2006/03/11/wi-pie-in-the-sky In fact, by one count, over 200 municipalities had announced projects by the middle of 2006].
Yet by 2007, the San Francisco project was dead along with many more. EarthLink’s model proved to be a failure. Metro-Fi and Metricom devices were left stranded on city poles, leaving municipal public works crews to clean them up and foot the bill for the removal cost. Meanwhile, Google’s free Wi-Fi in Mountain View, according to one insider we spoke with, was by then foundering.
Analysis of What Went Wrong
Much has been written on the death of municipal Wi-Fi. Eric M. Fraser, a legal scholar, pointed to Wi-Fi technology itself as the problem, citing three factors: “imperfect frequency, congestion within the frequency bands, and limited signal strength” as the main causes. These factors, he argued, resulted in signal degradation over short distances and when passing through “trees, cars, walls, windows, and household furniture”; thus, connections were unreliable and the cost to build out a network that would overcome this (which would require tremendous access point density in the architectural design of the network) was thus cost-prohibitive.
The dreams and aspirations of a municipal Wi-Fi system aren’t new: provide free, high-speed internet to your community, close the digital divide, shrink the homework gap, and give consumers a free, public option for internet service. It’s not hard to see why the concept has remained so popular over the years. Municipal Wi-Fi projects date back nearly two decades. As early as 1999 Metricom was offering a 28.8 kbps commercial service in most of the San Francisco Bay Area, and a few years later they launched a blisteringly-fast (for the time) service with 128 kbps – comparable to the copper-pair ISDN data service which many startup companies used for what was then considered broadband. In parallel, there was a growing desire to provide Wi-Fi data as a public service. One of the first high-profile public projects came in 2005, when the City and County of San Francisco, CA issued a Request for Information for the deployment of a city-wide wireless broadband network.
In 2006, EarthLink & Google, by proposing a unique, strategic partnership, were awarded the contract. Using the same wireless network, Google would offer free, 300 kilobits-per-second service, while EarthLink, an internet service provider transitioning from the dial-up modem to broadband era, would offer a faster, premium service of 1 megabit per second for US$20/month. The cost to the city would be zero, which was assuredly music to city officials’ ears. By this time, Google was already offering free Wi-Fi service in its hometown of Mountain View, CA and EarthLink had struck agreements with Philadelphia and other cities. Many others quickly followed suit as Chicago; Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis and signed similar deals with EarthLink, Metricom, Metro-Fi, and other providers. In fact, by one count, over 200 municipalities had announced projects by the middle of 2006.
Yet by 2007, the San Francisco project was dead along with many more. EarthLink’s model proved to be a failure. Metro-Fi and Metricom devices were left stranded on city poles, leaving municipal public works crews to clean them up and foot the bill for the removal cost. Meanwhile, Google’s free Wi-Fi in Mountain View, according to one insider we spoke with, was by then foundering.
Analysis of What Went Wrong
Much has been written on the death of municipal Wi-Fi. Eric M. Fraser, a legal scholar, pointed to Wi-Fi technology itself as the problem, citing three factors: “imperfect frequency, congestion within the frequency bands, and limited signal strength” as the main causes. These factors, he argued, resulted in signal degradation over short distances and when passing through “trees, cars, walls, windows, and household furniture”; thus, connections were unreliable and the cost to build out a network that would overcome this (which would require tremendous access point density in the architectural design of the network) was thus cost-prohibitiveWi-Fi also lacks an intrinsic authentication method, and does not have a handoff mechanism to allow users to move between access points without disruption to the connection.
Tim Wu – famous for coining the phrase “net neutrality” – blamed cities for turning over muni Wi-Fi networks to private partners that needed to generate profits in order to be sustainable. In 2007, he argued with “typical configurations…municipal wireless connections are slower, not dramatically cheaper, and by their nature less reliable than existing internet services,” thus no one would pay for it.
Another factor is simply market readiness. In 2005-2007, end users were much less likely to know how to associate to a public Wi-Fi network, much less even think it might be doable or have a reason to connect.
Public Wi-Fi Renaissance
While things looked bleak in 2007, municipal Wi-Fi never truly died. In cases where the city itself became the “anchor tenant” on the system (i.e., the city uses the network for cost reductions and to increase operational efficiency), municipal Wi-Fi networks were able to sustain and do quite well.
Meanwhile, the dreams of achieving ubiquitous, free connectivity have not only survived intact, but today are thriving all over the world. This is because the situation is dramatically different now and much more favorable for Public Wi-Fi deployments. This has occurred for several reasons.
For one, Wi-Fi has become a mature, recognizable, and reliable technology with many companies building powerful and affordable enterprise-grade solutions and systems. Wi-Fi technology itself has greatly improved, particularly with the release of 802.11AC.11 This is the fifth generation of Wi-Fi technology and provides gigabit speeds and excellent range. Mesh networking has made outdoor buildouts cost-effective and achievable.
At the same time, with mobile devices flourishing since the release of the first iPhone in 2007, people all over the world have become familiar with Wi-Fi and are confident in its basic ability to effectively deliver wireless internet connectivity. In fact, Wi-Fi plays a critical role in internet connectivity. One study forecasts that more than 49% of the world’s internet traffic will be transmitted on Wi-Fi technology by 2020.12 And it’s not just for humans. As the Internet of Things (IoT) advances, Wi-Fi will play in also key role in connectivity and backhaul for machine-to-machine (M2M) systems.
Lastly, municipalities have learned from the lessons of the past. Some are exploring breakthrough business models and public-private partnerships, while others are successfully justifying expenditures from the general fund to build and maintain Wi-Fi systems. In this way, Public Wi-Fi has emerged from the ashes of Muni Wi-Fi and there is no better time than today to consider building public Wi-Fi..